


Unscathed

by pleaseenteryourusernamehere



Category: Ocean's (Movies), Ocean's 8
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-06-07 10:10:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15216881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleaseenteryourusernamehere/pseuds/pleaseenteryourusernamehere
Summary: It's not that Lou thought Debbie would come back from jail entirely unscathed, she had just hoped against hope that she would.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so, so, so, so, SOOOO much for all the sweet comments and the kudos since I've joined this fandom. You can't imagine how happy it makes me each time I check my inbox to see the wonderful messages you lovlies have left. This was inspired by Frustrated Writer's comment under "Tell Her."

“She’s going to find out, Deb,” Tammy says behind her, securing the gauze pad over the long, recently stitched cut with tape. They had done this for three days now; snuck into the bathroom when Lou wasn’t around so Debbie’s dressing could be changed. “She’s going to blow.”

“Which is _exactly_ why I’m not telling her,” Debbie replies, feeling Tammy move away so she pulls her shirt down, hiding all hints of a wound before turning around to face her. “Thanks, Tim-Tam.”

Tammy opens her mouth to respond, but she stops, confusion drawing her dark eyebrows together slightly as she asks, “How hasn’t she noticed? You two have…” She trails off with a look that lets Debbie know that Lou and her’s relationship hadn’t flown under Tammy’s radar the past few days.

“I’ve…” Her cheeks flush, barely noticeable in the dim bathroom light, before she asks skeptically, “Do you _really_ want an answer to that question?”

Tammy seems to consider if for a second before a somewhat repulsed look shoots across her face, saying, “No...no, not really.”

“I didn’t think so,” Debbie laughs, opening the bathroom door, knowing that Tammy wasn’t homophobic or anything-she was just a little more personal when it came to sharing details about her sex life.

“Debbie-I’m serious, you need to tell her. She’ll find out that _I_ knew about it and flip and-”

“Relax, she’s not going to know.” Debbie assures her, hand resting on her sweater-clad arm, wondering when Tammy began to like cashmere. Maybe between P.T.A. meetings and garden parties.

“Well, she’ll certainly suspect something, because a normal person can’t patch up stitches on her shoulder blade.” Tammy says, eyes wide with worry, as if Lou posed an actual threat to her well-being. “It’ll scar so she’s going to find out, you might as well just tell her.”

“Tammy-you _know_ Lou. She’ll lose her fucking mind over it-probably call off the heist or something. And God knows what shitstorm she’d throw at the prison. I need her focused on stealing six pound of diamonds, not a couple stitches on my back.” Tammy opens her mouth, wanting to dispute the ‘couple stitches’ remark because, unless thirty-seven suddenly became synonymous with two, Debbie did not just have a little scratch on her shoulder blade. “I appreciate your concern, but I can handle it. And I’ll handle Lou when I want to.”

‘When I want to’ winds up being the next night.

<><><><><><><><>

“What’s that?” Lou asks, pulling away from their kiss as her fingers feel something abnormal on Debbie’s back through her shirt, vaguely in the shape of a rectangle. Debbie freezes, unsure how to answer, and Lou sits back on their bed, asking, “What is it?”

“It’s-...it’s nothing,” she answers unconvincingly, sitting up in hopes of distracting Lou as she places a hot, open-mouthed kiss at the base of her neck, tongue grazing the soft skin in a way she knows drives Lou crazy. She doesn’t fall for it, pushing Debbie away and looking at her with a stern expression that makes her feel like a child.

“Turn around,” Lou orders, making a twirling motion with her finger before her arms cross. Debbie might take her seriously if Lou wasn’t only in a half-unbuttoned shirt, but with those pouty, swollen lips and her blonde hair mused from sex, she sounds more like a dominatrix than someone about to play doctor-unless that was the kink, of course. “I’m serious, turn around.”

Debbie rolls her eyes, slowly turning around because she knows it annoys Lou, and sits down criss cross in front of her.

“Take your shirt off,” Lou says, tugging at the light green shirt Debbie’s wearing.

“Yes  _ma’am_ ,” Debbie replies overenthusiastically, mocking a salute, and taking off her top slowly, as if she is performing in a strip club. It’s going to get too serious for her liking in about three minutes, so she is taking advantage of any opportunity she can get to lighten the mood.

Lou’s fingers feel along the edge of the bandage, barely ghosting over the tape before brushes Debbie’s hair over her left shoulder as she asks, “What’s this?”

“New ink.” She replies and she can feel Lou’s glare burning her skin. _Some things never change_. She glances over her shoulder, seeing Lou’s best no-bullshit look staring her down and before jail she might’ve found it intimidating, but she now grins, adding, “I figured it was better than an ass tattoo.”

“Is it going to start bleeding if I take it off?” Lou asks, no amusement in her voice as her eyes focus back on the gauze, ignoring Debbie entirely.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Debbie says, voice breezy and careless as she glances around the room, admiring a painting on the wall that they had stolen from a millionaire’s mansion a decade ago.

“Do you want me to take it off?”

“I’d rather you _not_ take it off because-” She stops as she feels the bandage peeling from her skin, gently despite the annoyance making Lou’s face look tense. Her expression doesn’t change as she continues to remove the dressing, indecipherable under Debbie’s intense stare and she’s not sure if it’s because she’s practiced indifference for so long or because at this point, nothing surprised Lou when it came to Debbie.

“Odd tattoo choice,” She says, her voice soft as she looks at what Debbie knows is thirty-seven stitches across her right shoulder blade. “When’d you get this?”

“When I was released,” Debbie replies quietly, hoping for once Lou could just take her injury with a grain of salt and move on. She always made a mountain out of a molehill; any cut had to be thoroughly cleaned and bandaged, any bruise had to be iced and avoided, any sprain had to be kept off of and braced. She had been stabbed in jail and left unattended for three days without so much as rubbing alcohol; a cut that had been stitched by someone who actually had a doctorates in medicine would heal perfectly.

“How’d you get it?” Lou’s fingers barely graze some of the stitches, causing Debbie to jump slightly because she hadn’t been expecting it-definitely not because it hurt or anything.

“You want the honest answer or the rehearsed answer?” She asks, knowing Lou would go apeshit if she heard the truth. Lou was hardwired to protect people and would go through Hell and back to for anyone who she cared about, no matter what harm was inflicted upon her. It was an admirable trait to some, but a selfish, stupid one, in Debbie’s opinion, because she’d spent fifty-three agonizing hours by Lou’s side in the ICU, unsure if the Aussie was going to live in the aftermath of one of her revengeful endeavors.

“What do you think?”

 _I think I don’t want to be having this conversation right now-or ever, in fact_.

“Well, after I was released I wanted to take a swim at the beach, but no one told me that there were sharks infesting the waters-”

“Debbie.” Lou’s voice is tender and delicate, as if it’s precariously balanced on a hair-thin thread, one syllable away from breaking and Debbie looks over her shoulder again, not expecting the hurt look on her face. Lou had a horrible habit of feeling responsible whenever Debbie was injured-which happened often, with her incredible knack for finding trouble-and it was half the reason Debbie didn’t want to tell her about the stitches. Lou still has her eyes trained on the wound and her hand is resting right next to it, less than a centimeter away from touching the damaged skin.

“Someone wasn’t thrilled when the rumors about my possible release started,” Debbie says finally, after she sees that Lou is nearly in tears by simply staring at the wound. Her sad blue eyes meet Debbie’s and their stare is heavy for a minute before Debbie continues, trying to ease the weight of the conversation, “It didn’t bleed too bad and it got me released about a week ahead of when they had planned because they didn’t want to provide me with any shitty medical treatment.”

“Why-” Lou’s voice breaks, barely, and she presses her lips together in a thin line and Debbie watches as her throat moves when she swallows, the action giving her a second to compose herself. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“‘Cause I knew you’d go crazy,” Debbie answers honestly, meeting Lou’s eyes again.

“How have you bandaged…” she trails off, looking between the stitches and Debbie before her eyes flare and she determines, “Tammy.”

“And I nearly threatened her children’s lives so she wouldn’t tell you.” Debbie makes sure to cover Tammy’s ass because Tammy’d had a valid point earlier when she was worried about Lou finding out. This heist wouldn’t work if Lou was too angry at Tammy to cooperate.

“What happened?” Her finger runs down Debbie’s shoulder blade, avoiding the stitches as she feels over Debbie’s smooth skin.

Debbie turns away from Lou’s gaze, facing the wall as she thinks about that night in jail, less than a week ago, trying to figure out a description that lessen the severity of the event. She can still feel the shock-the shock of waking up to searing pain and knowing without a doubt someone had just cut your back wide open. She was patiently waiting for _those_ nightmares to start. She had kicked her assailant-a fifty year old woman named Trish that had done nothing but torment her since they met-in the face, efficiently breaking her nose and giving the prison guards something to do. Trish had attacked her with a knife that had been smuggled in from God knows where and was going to get an extra year or two to her fifteen year sentence for it. Debbie had gotten a gauze pad haphazardly slapped on with some tape before she was moved into her own cell. Two days later, she lied through her teeth to those planning her release and her first stop was a 24 Hour Emergency building.

“I was cut,” Debbie says simply, childishly.

“Yeah…” Lou draws it out slowly, blatant annoyance in her voice. “I got that.”

“A cellmate cut me with a smuggled knife.” Debbie refuses to turn around, not wanting to see the anger or the pain or the pity on Lou’s face. She didn’t want to turn around and have Lou convince her to tell the entire story, because with one seething glare Debbie would confess to things she hadn’t even done. There was a lot for Lou to learn second-hand about how fucked up prison was but Debbie had thought she’d spread it out in small increments; not cover her stab wound and her knife wound in the span of three days.

“Does this cellmate have a name?” Lou asks after a moment.

“Not one that you’ll ever learn,” Debbie replies harshly, maybe a little too harshly, because she feels Lou sit back away from her. She didn’t know why she cared what happened to Trish; the woman deserved to rot in hell. But knowing Lou, she’d put herself in jail, rig the system so that she could be in same cell as Trish, and murder her in her sleep one night.

“Would you stop it?” Lou snaps, getting up from their bed and angrily crinkling the old bandages and tape in her hand before dropping it in a trash can. “You’ve popped a couple, so get off your fucking high horse-you’re bleeding and it looks infected. When’d Tammy clean it last?” Debbie opens her mouth to say something, but hesitates because it’d been nearly two days and she didn’t want to tell Lou that. Lou cuts her off before she can even start with an irritated “Save it-don’t lie to me right now” as she walks into their bathroom, returning seconds later with a medical kit.

Debbie feels belittled and embarrassed, like she just got sent to the principal’s office, and she doesn’t meet Lou’s eyes she rummages through the medical kit, laying out gloves, tape, gauze pads, tweezers, towels, and rubbing alcohol.

She hears the snap of latex as Lou puts the gloves on a second before she feels the smooth rubber on her back, touching the spot of her cut that hurt the most-probably the place where the stitches had ripped.

The tweezers are cold against her skin as they pull out the broken sutures, but Lou’s even breaths are hot against her neck. Her hands are steady; she had always been good at cleaning people up after they got hurt and in another life, Debbie wholeheartedly believes she would’ve made a great surgeon. But instead, here she was, cleaning Debbie up after she’d been lied to for three days and separated for five years and dragged back into the criminal world after going clean.

The rubbing alcohol burns without much warning and Debbie murders her bottom lip so Lou doesn’t know how bad it hurts. Even if she can tell how much pain Debbie is in, she doesn’t say anything and Debbie appreciates her not gloating. The cut had been deep to begin with and it’d been poorly treated over the past five days, so even hydrogen peroxide would’ve felt like hell on it.

“I’m sorry,” Debbie murmurs when the towel that’d been covered in rubbing alcohol is laid on their bed with a surprising amount of blood on it.

“No you’re not,” Lou sighs, sounding unbelievably tired as she dries the area around the wound with a towel.

For the briefest of seconds, Debbie feels like pulling Lou into a hug and apologizing until she’s hoarse because she’d brought Lou through Hell and back the past few days without even realizing it. She knew Lou would do anything for her and she had taken advantage of it with a few kisses and one night together so Lou did a complete 180 for her. Lou may have been bored but she was still reformed-somewhat-and then she comes back with a flirtatious smile, suggestive wink, and completely ruins her. She knew exactly what she’d done; she had seduced Lou into this heist, just like she always did, and hadn’t even taken a second to consider the consequences. One would think that, having recently been released from prison, she would want to keep those she loved on _this_ side of those slamming barred doors, but the very first thing she’d done was pull her into their most dangerous heist yet.

“Lou-I’m serious.” She turns to look over her shoulder, meeting Lou’s guarded eyes, voice pleading with her so she will take a moment to believe the sincerity of her words. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed one of these days,” Lou says, not acknowledging the apology, not even meeting her eyes, but her tone is harsh and biting as her hand pulls away from Debbie’s back. “Whether it’s your sheer _stupidity_ or-”

“I’m not going to get killed,” Debbie scoffs confidently, arms crossing over her bare chest. “And you don’t know if Danny’s death can be used as a valid point yet, so don’t-”

“You’re incredibly selfish,” Lou says and Debbie wants to defend herself, but she recognizes the tone in her voice and those downcast eyes and she knows Lou’s fighting off tears right now. “You don’t even realize what you did to-to- _Danny._..God, you should’ve seen him after that day in court, as if punching Claude in front of the judge wasn’t enough...it’d keep you from even thinking about shoplifting.”

Debbie’s eyebrows furrow in confusion; when Danny visited her in jail he’d been nothing short of the charming, funny, somewhat disappointed brother he always was. He had teased her about looking awful in orange and made fun of her unkempt hair, he never showed more concern than a simple “I know it’s rough inside” with his calming, handsome smile.

“Oh, what? You thought he _wasn’t_ worried? He was worried sick; he didn’t sleep the first week you were in and Rusty and Tess couldn’t get him to speak for a month. And when he finally went back to being Danny, he was _furious_. He almost murdered Claude-Rusty and I got there as he was picking the lock to his apartment. I don’t even know where he got the gun, but I’d never seen him like that, he was...terrifying that night. You were his little sister, he loved you more than he loved anyone else. He would’ve walked through fire, he would’ve gone to jail-he would’ve _killed_ for you, Debbie.” Her voice is tight with emotion, but her eyes are still looking down, her long, thick lashes brushing her cheeks. “ _I_ would’ve killed for you-but then Danny told me you had a plan and I knew it’d be for Claude...it wouldn’t stop being about Claude, would it?”

“I’m sorry-”

“Stop _apologizing_ ,” she says, almost begs, as her hand comes up to brush the hair out of her face but Debbie doesn’t miss the way her finger quickly wipes away a tear at the corner of her eye. “Please-just stop apologizing.”

“Lou, hey,  _Lou_ , come here,” Debbie says, turning around so she’s facing Lou again, outstretched arm pulling her into her bare chest where she rests her head in the nape of Debbie’s neck. “I am sorry...for everything, okay?”

The blonde head nods, preceding the feeling of her wet eyelashes fluttering against Debbie’s skin. Her heart sinks to the bottom of everything that is when a small, strangled sob escape Lou’s mouth and her arms wraps around Debbie tightly, clinging to her more than hugging. Between the two, Lou was the more emotional one because she felt feelings for the both of them, so it’s not surprising when she mumbles out a mess of words and the only ones Debbie can catch are “bingo,” “Claude Becker,” “knife,” and “sorry.” The sobs wrack Lou’s thin frame and it kills Debbie because she knew it was her fault and no brilliant lie or excuse would be able to change that fact.

She really, honestly, did not deserve Lou.

Lou had stuck by her side during years of hardships and and unabashedly showed her love through thick and thin, and how had Debbie repaid her? By running off with a rich art dealer who wasn’t half as good as Lou in bed and letting him con her into a six year prison sentence. But that hadn’t mattered-Lou took care of Danny, moved Debbie’s stuff into the warehouse, and sent personal touches in all the smuggled boxes she received, like Tammy’s family Christmas card, Danny’s eulogy, the entire script to “The Grand Budapest Hotel”-a movie she had wanted to see-and a picture of them in front of their blue convertible they owned when they were in their early twenties, with the words “a promise is a promise” scribbled on the back in Lou’s god-awful handwriting.

Holding her now, Debbie’s also able to really notice for the first time how much weight Lou’s lost since she’d last shared a bed with her-not that she was ever fat, she’s just considerably bonier-and she can’t help but feel like that’s her fault, too. Lou always forgot to eat when she was tired and stressed, and with a club to run and a lover in jail, there probably weren’t many moments over the past five years that she didn’t feel overworked and worried.

Debbie runs her hand up and down Lou’s shirt-covered back, hoping she was comforting her but knowing she wasn’t. Even she feels like crying; for herself, for Lou, for Danny, for everything, but this is Lou’s moment and she’s not going to fuck that up, too. She didn’t deserve to cry over the mess she had single-handedly created.

When Lou sits back, her face and eyes red, she takes a couple deep breaths to calm herself before her breathing is even enough to say, “I knew you’d-I knew jail would...be hard and I knew you’d _change_ , but-” her breath is shaky and she hastily wipes away another tear “I didn’t think-I didn’t want to believe that you’d...be hurt, and I know that sounds stupid, it’s _jail_ , of course something would happen but you always come out on top but you were fucking attacked- _twice_ -with a knife or a shank or whatever the hell you were stabbed with and you’ve popped your stitches I didn’t even know about and I’m crying while you’re bleeding from-”

“Lou, _breathe_ ,” Debbie says quietly and calmly, her hand resting on Lou’s arm as the blonde woman nearly works herself into hyperventilation during her tirade.

Lou’s eyes meet hers when she’s finally breathing normal again and she looks furious and heartbroken at the same time and Debbie leans forward, gently cupping Lou’s damp and splotchy cheek, giving her a kiss that she hopes is comforting. Lou doesn’t pull away for a long minute, letting Debbie’s hands run along her body and allowing Debbie’s tongue to move against her own, almost long enough that they both forget how fucked up they are as a pair, but she stops when Debbie tries to push her down onto the bed.

“You’re bleeding,” Lou reminds softly, pushing her away with a hand that still had a latex glove on it. Debbie rolls her eyes but the look in Lou’s is so tender that _she_ damn near cries.

As Lou begins to clean the wound again, the rubbing alcohol hardly burns as Debbie thinks about the pain she had inflicted upon those she loved in the past five years. She didn’t have to right to show pain after what she had done.

Silently, she swears to herself that-if she can get Lou to stay around after the heist, if she can work up the courage to propose, if she can get lucky enough for her to say yes-then she will never share another fucking detail about prison because Lou Miller had hurt enough for her already.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I accidentally deleted this chapter so I’m sorry to those of you who commented, they were deleted with it :( As always, thanks for the comments and kudos. I have at least one more chapter and a oneshot coming based off your suggestions :)

“Well, you’re a pretty little thing,” the prison guard says, tone too vulgar and eyes too hungry for the statement to be innocent like the way that Rueben would talk to her, showering her in compliments that never failed to warm her heart. When Rueben complimented her, he sounded like a proud grandpa at his granddaughter’s wedding-this prison guard sounded like a crazy homeless guy who was watching young girls from an alley leave clubs.

Debbie crosses her legs on her bed and ignores him; prison guards are generally a little handsy, a little horny, and anything but attractive. She’d been conditioned to hate all forms of law enforcement from possibly the youngest age imaginable and even for her, prison guards were hardly worth mentioning.

To her, if you couldn’t be a Marine, you joined any of the other Armed Services. If you couldn’t be in any of the other Armed Services, you became a police officer. If you couldn’t be a police officer, you became a prison guard.

They were the washouts; some idiot who failed high school but still managed to get his diploma just in time to knock up his girlfriend when he was eighteen so he needed a job and applied at the nearest prison in sight because he was legitimately too stupid for anything else. They were some of the filthiest people Debbie had ever seen-which was really saying something considering she grew up with _Danny_ -and they were nasty, abusive, and rough. They would rile you up just to shove you around and put you in your place because they felt horrible about their shit lives and their shit jobs so they needed to take it out on convicted felons, because in jail you didn’t have a voice that anyone would listen to.

Which is what Debbie assumes the guy is doing as he enters her cell.

“I was talking to you.” His New York accent is thick, but when Debbie looks at him, all she can notice is the cut on his jawline from where he shaved earlier today. _He can’t even shave right_. “I _said_ ,” he grabs her jaw tightly, forcing her to meet his ugly brown eyes. “I was fucking talking to you.”

Debbie’s heart rate surges in fear as the guy’s nasty lips press against her own, his sorry excuse of a mustache scratching her skin. She can’t pull away; she tries but his grip is too tight on her jaw so she remains tight lipped against his pressing, repulsive tongue. Somehow, it manages to worm it’s way into her mouth and she bites down- _hard_ -so that he jumps back.

 _Wrong decision_.

She feels the burning, pulsing heat in her cheek before she sees his hand or hears the slap and she’s on the floor without even being able to register what’s happened. Quickly, she scrambles to get up but his poorly polished shoe slams into her side, effectively knocking the wind from her before she can even get to her knees. She’s lifted up by the front of her uniform like she’s a ragdoll and he shoves her into the wall, pressing hisobese body into hers as his pants next to her ear.

Realistically, Debbie knew somewhere in the back of her mind that something like this could happen; wardens overlooked more than they oversaw and they were usually a bunch of dirty old bastards anyway. The U.S. didn’t care about what happened on the inside, and even if some of prison’s most gruesome horror stories were made public, people would even argue that the felons “deserved it” because they were the ones who wound up in jail. And even if worse had come to worse, she thought it’d be quicker-something that would just _happen_ -the son of a bitch would come in, come, and get out.

But this guy was taking his time, working to make her feel as disgusting as possible while he kisses her neck, his thick tongue trying too hard to feel good against her skin. The entire hallway is empty. He had been the only guard standing duty so there is no one else around who cares and in solitary, no one but prison guards check on you.

Debbie continuously thinks of insults-his greasy hair that makes him look like he hasn’t showered in weeks and his horrible body odor makes a dead skunk smell like Heaven and those yellow teeth made American cheese look white-to distract herself from the feel of this guy’s greedy hands unbuttoning her prison jumpsuit and running over her exposed skin, but she can’t shake the feeling of being dirty. His saliva, his kisses, his disgusting body on hers; she feels like taking off her skin and burning it as he throws her onto the uncomfortable bed effortlessly. Her head slams into the steel frame around it and she’s grateful for the pain to distract her from the feeling of _him_.

His hands grasp too roughly at her breasts and when he notices the long scar on her hip bone from a botched heist ages ago, he kisses the tattoo above it, sucking until the skin turns blue as his teeth leave a bruise over the black ink. His hands hold her legs down when she tries to kick him and he bites her hip so hard she’s probably bleeding when she tries to punch his face.

She damn near cries; she never thought it’d be so humiliating.

Disgusting? Yes.

Painful? Absolutely.

Terrifying? Definitely.

But as she’s laying there, entirely helpless under a repulsive, overweight, half-balding, failure of a man who is paying more attention to that tattoo than any lover she’s ever had, the only word to describe the feeling is humiliating.

<><><><><><><><>

Lou’s tongue runs along Debbie’s hipbone as she travels down her lovers body slowly, not leaving an inch of skin untouched as she went. Debbie’s scar on her hip is there, a little more faded than it had been five years ago but her tattoo is still clear, dark, and delicately outlining her hip.

“No Honor Amongst Thieves” had been written in loopy, beautiful calligraphy fourteen years ago above the horizontal scar. Lou had been there; both when Debbie had been shot at by their own team member in the middle of a heist and when Debbie had been lying on the table in the tattoo parlor, flirting with the artist because she was too nervous about getting a tattoo to do much of anything else. It’d been two days after she had been shot at, a whopping four hours after she’d gotten stitches, and Lou probably should’ve stopped her but whether or not Debbie got a tattoo had been the least of her concerns at the time.

Their pickpocket-Erin-had been a sketchy character since the day that Lou met her, but she had the best hands Lou had ever seen so, despite their suspicion of a possible cocaine addiction, Erin was used in any con where she was needed. She had shot at Debbie while they were in the middle of robbing a mansion but her aim was terrible; of nearly an entire round, she’d only grazed Debbie’s skin twice, and only one of those was worth mentioning.

Tammy, through her ties with the local real estate industry, was able to find them a house that they could lay low in for a couple days until Debbie finally caved and admitted that she may need stitches-a fact that Lou had been stressing, given that you could _see Debbie’s fucking pelvis_.

The tattoo had been somewhat of a joke, initially, but the longer they stayed in the con industry, the more and more the two realized how few con artists played by basic, moral rules. They’d been stabbed in the back-almost literally-quite a few times and those words inked in on her hip reminded them just how careful they had to be when they wanted to trust someone. Even Debbie had proved her tattoo to be true when she had left without so much as a goodbye to live with Claude Becker.

Lou presses a kiss to it, tongue trailing over the familiar ink but she’s surprised when Debbie pushes-nearly shoves-her head away from her hip. Lou looks up in shock, confused as to why Debbie had done that, but those big brown eyes are huge with fear and hurt and something unrecognizable as they meet Lou’s.

“What was that?” Lou asks, voice soft as she stares at Debbie from her place between her legs, any thoughts that might’ve been filthy thirty seconds ago immediately changing to concern as Debbie seems to have an internal conversation with herself, eyes shutting as her head presses back into the pillow, hand running over her face. “Deb?”

Lou moves up her body, hands resting on either side of Debbie’s head, their bare chests nearly touching. She looks like she’s somewhere far away, thinking about something absolutely terrifying, if that frozen look of horror plastered on her features is any indication. When she does open her eyes, she trains them on the ceiling as if it’s suddenly the most interesting thing on the planet.

“Hey, look at me,” Lou moves off of her, settling next to her side, turning her chin with a gentle hand so she’ll look at her. “Did you do something to your hip?” She asks, unable to come up with a better reason as to why a hickey would have received that kind of reaction.

Debbie opens her mouth to say something but then shakes her head ‘no’ in response instead.

Lou’s about to let it go, chalk it up to sleep deprivation or something, but when Debbie kisses her, she recognizes the desperation of her warm tongue and the secrecy of those talented lips moving against hers and she knows it’s a kiss for distraction; the type Debbie always used when Lou had unknowingly gotten into something too deep for the Ocean to handle. Using every rational brain cell she possesses, she pushes her away, eyeing her carefully as Debbie looks as confused as Lou felt.

“What’d you do that for?” Debbie asks lowly, her voice husky and breath ghosting over Lou’s lips.

“What’s wrong with your hip?” Lou asks, refusing to look anywhere lower than Debbie’s eyes, remembering the look of terror and pain in them a minute ago to keep her from getting distracted by wandering hands and naked bodies.

“Nothing’s wrong with my hip,” she replies, glancing down her body, where her hip was laying up, the hickey already noticeable under the ‘A’ and the ‘M’ of ‘Amongst.’ “It’s right there.”

She sounds ridiculously immature and if Lou wasn’t positive before, she is absolutely sure now that there is something wrong with Debbie.

“Be serious.” Lou wants to kick herself for even thinking of saying that because Debbie Ocean isn’t serious about anything unless it had to do with a con or a rare, tender moment between the two of them.

It’d be easier to steal the Eiffel Tower in broad daylight without any witnesses than get Debbie to admit to having something wrong with her. She was the most emotionally shut off person Lou had ever met and even now, when they’re fucking _engaged_ , she is still a hard person to read when she wants to be. The problem with Debbie was that she didn’t have problems; she laughed them off, she kissed them away, she buried them deep-she did not talk about them.

“I am being serious. My hip is right there-look.”

Lou doesn’t know why she looks-she knows Debbie’s hip is there-but in the second that she’s distracted, Debbie wraps her leg around her waist in such a way that she’s entirely immobilized as the brunette rolls on top of her. Lou glares at her but takes the opportunity to feel along Debbie’s tattoo, fingers running over the skin and pressing at random, searching for abnormalities but finding none.

“Well it’s not _broken_ , doc,” Debbie laughs, face hovering over Lou’s for a second before she kisses her slowly, her soft lips curving up in a smile as she says, “I’m not your age yet.”

Lou ignores the jab and instead pinches her hip, wondering if there is a problem with the skin or nerves or something. Besides a jolt from pain, Debbie doesn’t react except to say, “Jesus, Lou, if you use your fucking pincers on me, yeah, maybe something’ll be wrong.”

But her teasing smile doesn’t reach her eyes and Lou’s fingers trace absentmindedly over the tattoo, knowing every letter by heart, as she looks at Debbie with a questioning stare.

“What happened to it?” Lou asks softly, nail barely grazing her scar.

“Nothing permanent,” Debbie assures, which only unsettles Lou further because when Debbie finally meets her eyes, there’s something dark and protective in them.

“Deb-” Lou stops, really examining those damaged, scared orbs, wide and haunting, and it all looks oddly familiar and with a sinking feeling Lou’s realizes why.

She feels like she’s looking into her own eyes, staring at her reflection nearly thirty years ago when she sailed away from Australia to China on a cargo ship. She was fourteen-just maturing, just really beginning to look like more than a scrappy, scrawny raggamuffin orphan and the last foster father had noticed. Noticed with his calloused hands, with a half-drunk tongue and filthy mouth, with-with more than a fourteen year old girl could handle. Debbie’s eyes remind her of her own the first time she looked in the mirror after what he had done; a little bit scared, extremely pained, and unbearably humiliated. “Baby, what happened?”

Her hand cups Debbie’s jaw, thumb grazing her smooth cheek and Debbie looks away but Lou persists, turning Debbie’s face to meet hers, eyes unconvincing as she mutters, “Nothing.”

Lou doesn’t believe her-of course she doesn’t-but decides not to push it as Debbie settles on top of her, their naked bodies touching in a way that’s purely for comfort as her head rests in the nape of Lou’s neck. Her fingers run through Debbie’s long, soft hair and she presses a kiss to her scalp as she works to untangle the brunette tresses from her large sapphire engagement ring after a couple minutes.

Sexual assault in prison wasn’t unheard of, in fact, it wasn’t even uncommon, but Lou hadn’t thought it would happen to Debbie.

Debbie was an enigma, a force to be reckoned with, Lou couldn’t ever imagine her helpless, especially against someone who wanted their- _had it been a man or a woman?_ -way with her. She’d seen Debbie break a man’s arm for getting too handsy with her in a club; she would never be overpowered by someone like Lou had been when she was fourteen. In Lou’s mind, Debbie was stronger than her because she could protect herself and had never once gotten hurt, not how Lou had let herself be taken so easily.

Right as Lou thinks that she’s handling this well-she hasn’t broken any furniture or screamed at anyone or demanded the assailant’s name-Debbie sits up on one arm so she can quickly wipe away a tear with the other.

Her blood damn near _boils_ on the spot because Debbie never cried; not from pain, not from anger, not from joy, not from sadness. In their twenty-three years of knowing each other, Debbie had cried once in front of her and three times when she thought Lou wasn’t listening.

“It wasn’t even-I wasn’t...he didn’t _rape_ me-” her voice is shaky, one hand holding her left eye closed so a tear doesn’t fall down her cheek “He only-he...it wasn’t bad, he barely touched me-I...” She trails off, looking at the headboard for guidance before she meets Lou’s eyes again, angry and defiantly not allowing a single tear to fall. “It wasn’t anything like you-I shouldn’t even be crying over-”

“You cry over whatever you want, okay?” Lou murmurs, keeping her voice steady so that she doesn’t fucking explode in anger because some bastard had hurt Debbie-someone had put their hands on her unwilling body and kissed her when she didn’t want them to and she had been fucking _humiliated_ like Lou had. Someone had made her feel like she wasn’t worth crying over and Lou can’t even begin to feel sad for her-she is furious and nothing but.

Maybe a little too forcibly, she pulls Debbie back to her chest and holds her tighter as she feels her tear slide down her collarbone. One of her feet trails up Debbie’s calf, rubbing the exposed skin soothingly as Lou holds her head to her chest, refusing to let her up because she needs to cry, dammit. You don’t keep things like that bottled up for weeks or months, maybe even years, and expect everything to fix itself. Lou knew that firsthand-she wasn’t going to let Debbie make the same mistakes her immature, stupid self had.

Debbie doesn’t make a sound as she cries for nearly thirty minutes against Lou, hands grasping at her sides and holding to her like she’s her only lifeline. Lou remains silent, too, unable to speak from the sheer anger coursing through her veins so she just holds Debbie in the way she knows she’s needed and does nothing more. Eventually, she cries herself to sleep and Lou swears to her sleeping form that she will fucking _ruin_ whoever hurt her.

<><><><><><><><>

Twelve days later, Riccardo Albert Rito is arrested for over twenty accounts of child pornography found on his personal computer-thank you, Nine Ball. His prized possessions have been stolen over the past week-thank you, Constance-and any family heirloom jewels in his house have been turned into new pieces of jewelry, up for sale-thank you, Amita. His house is mysteriously sold without his knowledge-thank you, Tammy. His case gains nationwide attention-thank you, Daphne and Rose-and he’s murdered his second day in prison.

Was it closure? No, definitely not.

But it eases the the ache in Lou’s chest every time she remembers Debbie’s heartbroken eyes as she was haunted by the memory of the bastard and that’s enough, really-it justifies everything in Lou’s mind.

She’d burn the world down and rebuild it in a day if that would eliminate all the pain Debbie had ever experienced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, if any of you have ideas as to what Lou or Debbie might have tattooed on themselves, feel free to share because I have a few ideas but none of them are really solid and I definitely feel like they both have a little bit of ink.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so so so SOOO much for all the lovely comments and brilliant suggestions on this fic, and I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to respond to them. This is a combination of ClemenTina and Tatea14's comments-I hope this does your suggestions justice. Have a beautiful day :)

Lou gasps loudly, waking herself out of her peaceful slumber as she feels blinding pain in her ribs.

Next to her, Debbie whimpers, dark eyebrows furrowed with invisible pain and face taught with agony. She kicks in her sleep again, this time narrowly missing Lou’s form, and tugs at the sheets frantically. Something between a scream and a cry comes out of her throat, loud in the silence of the night, and Lou’s thankful that Constance and Amita-the two heaviest sleepers on the team-are the only ones in the warehouse.

“Hey-” Lou sits up on her elbow, reaching for Debbie with a cautious hand “-baby, get up.”

She shakes her gently and Debbie thrashes against the covers, slowly working the Egyptian cotton sheets into knots around her limbs. Debbie hadn’t been able to sleep soundly since the heist and because of it, the only sleep Lou had gotten was during her two-month road trip to the west coast and back. Upon her return to New York City, Debbie’s tired eyes and defeated stance and hoards of sleeping pills had caused Lou to try everything so Debbie could get some sleep without being terrified of nightmares.

Debbie would never admit to it, but Lou knew she was scared of just the _thought_ of sleep; every horrible experience of the Ocean’s life was replayed, twisted by her own mind, created to be more horrifying than it actually had been and it occurred every damn night. Some nights Lou wasn’t waken up but most nights she was and she had to watch Debbie struggle against her demented brain, plead with the visions of her past, and lay there completely helpless as she’s haunted by people who had hurt her.

And to make matters worse, Debbie refused to see a therapist or discuss her problems because she’s too fucking ignorant-even after all these years-to realize she wasn’t in this alone, that every time she hurt, so did Lou. Neither of them liked the feeling of helplessness and when it came to Debbie’s nightmares, that’s all they could feel because how do you fight something you can’t see?

Debbie was exhausted and scared and Lou couldn’t do a damn thing about it because she wasn’t a fucking miracle worker. Simply _holding_ Debbie or _telling_ her she’s safe doesn’t take away nightmares from years of abuse, doesn’t make decades of pain go away, doesn’t magically fix everything. Unless she could wipe her memory, Debbie would never just relax into Lou’s arms and sleep soundly through the night.

“No- _no_!” Debbie flinches as if she’d just been hit with something and attempts to hide her face with her hands. “No! _Please_ , Erin- _STOP_!” She practically screeches the word and the pleading, panicked, begging tone in her voice is something Lou’s never heard from her.

But that’s the last of her concern; she’d said the name ‘Erin’ and that meant some serious fucking trouble.

Erin was a former con partner of theirs-a pickpocket-who’d had a cocaine addiction during their years of heists. When she felt like she wasn’t getting enough of the share, she shot at Debbie in the midst of a robbery while Lou was on the other side of the mansion. Fortunately the damage didn’t go past more than a long scar on the Ocean’s hip from where a bullet grazed her skin, which never resulted in nightmares-so that meant she’d done something Debbie while in jail and in the sickest part of Lou’s mind, scenario after scenario begins to run through her head.

“Debbie,” Lou grabs one of Debbie’s wrists, groaning when the Ocean’s knee slams into her stomach, “Dammit, Debbie, get up!”

Debbie wrenches her arm out of Lou’s grasp, swinging blindly and unable to connect with anything so she desperately cries out again, “ _Stop_! Erin, please-I didn’t-” She cuts herself off as she practically convulses, dodging an imaginary punch “ _No_!”

Gritting her teeth and tensing, Lou prepares herself for the worst as she grabs both of Debbie’s arms after a few seconds of poorly-aimed punches and firmly sits down on top of Debbie’s hips, cursing loudly when she gets kneed in the back.

“Debbie-” she shakes her arms furiously, clenching her jaw when Debbie hits her right in the spine “- _get up_!”

The shaking seems to get the job done; brown eyes fly open, wide and scared and hurt as her body loses its fight, her chest heaving while she takes deep breaths. Lou loosens her grip on Debbie’s wrists, rubbing her thumbs over the inside of her clammy palms as Debbie closes her eyes, head sinking back into the pillow, a heavy sigh leaving her lips.

“Deb?” Lou asks after a few eerily quiet moments, still on top of her, but all of her weight not pressing into Debbie’s weak and cowering frame.

“Just…” Debbie trails off, opening her eyes slowly, expression unreadable in the near pitch-black of the night. Her hand squeezes Lou’s fingers tightly as she says, “Just give me a minute, baby.”

The note of desperation in her voice makes Lou back off, moving away from her, giving her a second to compose herself on her own as Lou takes a deep breath, wincing from the punches and kicks that’ve been thrown tonight. The only one that _really_ hurt was the one to the spine-everything else would only be sore, but that one will definitely bruise.

Debbie lays still for a minute or so, the muscles in her face twitching slightly with her conflicting thoughts as she evens out her breathing. Eventually, she rubs her eyes, glaring at the clock at the table which shows she’s slept less than three hours, a frustrated whine leaving her lips as she sits up.

“Did I-are you okay?” Debbie asks quietly, tucking her unruly hair behind her ear, the bags under her eyes more prominent than ever with the darkness casting shadows of her face.

“What did Erin do?” Lou asks, ignoring the question entirely because she knows Debbie feels guilty any time she winds up hurting her and-frankly-she didn’t give a shit about her own injuries. Erin had returned to torment Debbie at her weakest time and that made Lou hate the weasley, sniveling cocaine addict more than she ever thought possible.

“She didn’t-”

“Don’t lie to me,” Lou cuts her off, because Erin wasn’t a fucking joke; whenever she was concerned, disaster struck. As if _shooting_ Debbie wasn’t enough, Erin had managed to track them down while they were living in Detroit and get them involved in a turf war between gangs.

“How did-”

“You talk more in your sleep about jail than you ever do to me.” That isn’t a lie-Debbie didn’t ever talk to her about what happened in jail. Everything Lou knew, she had to find out on her own, Debbie hadn’t simply told her about a traumatic experience. Lou had to learn it all by catching her off-guard, through listening to her cry during her nightmares, her flashbacks, her moments of mental relapse.

“That’s not-”

“ _Dammit,_  Debbie, what did Erin do while you were inside?” She takes Debbie’s hand to make up for the harsh tone she uses that makes Debbie flinch just barely.

“You don’t need to yell at me.” Debbie twists her hand out of Lou’s, quickly getting off their bed as she adds sarcastically, “You could be a _tad_ more sympathetic, baby.”

Lou groans in frustration, having had this argument countless times before and each time it goes absolutely nowhere because Debbie couldn’t discuss her problems like a normal fucking person. With a huff, she’s out of bed, following Debbie through the doorway to their bathroom, where the brunette is splashing water on her face. “Well, you don’t ever talk to me, so what the fuck am I supposed to do? _Whisper_ to you?”

Debbie glares at her, the hurt on her face from moments ago completely gone and replaced with intense anger as she pats her face dry with a yellow hand towel. “How about stop asking all these dumbass questions for a start?”

“ _Dumbass_ questions?” Lou asks, voice rising in pitch, crossing her arms and standing in the middle of the doorway as Debbie tries to get past her, quickly giving up and circling back into their bathroom as she grabs a brush off the counter. Lou mentally prepares herself to dodge and duck in case it goes flying.

“Yeah, you’re a smart person, Lou, what the _fuck_ do you think Erin did? Give me her wedding invitation? Have some tea and a jolly ole laugh about the time she almost killed me?” Debbie angrily runs the brush through her hair, not even wincing as it gets caught in a knot, glaring at Lou in the mirror. “Use your fucking brain, why do you-”

“Use _my_ fucking brain? How about you use _yours_ , Debbie? Why do you think you can’t sleep? Why do you think you have nightmares? Why do you think you’re not, mentally, in any better shape than you were the day you were released? You’re not fucking talking-you ridicule therapy, you don’t take your sleeping pills, you keep whatever happened in jail to yourself and you won’t talk to anyone.”

“You’re the one yelling,” Debbie points out, tone harsh and biting. “Don’t blame me when you’re-”

“You’re shut off and emotionless and nothing _short_ of a fucking bitch whenever anyone tries to help you, Debbie, and I’m getting tired of it. Don’t blame _me_ -”

“I am fucking blaming you, okay? I wake up and the _first_ thing I hear is shit about how I should talk about what I don’t want to talk about. I don’t want to talk about Erin-I don’t want to fucking hear the name ever again-what makes you think it’d be fun for me to talk about it? I seriously don’t get it.”

“Talking helps.”

“Yeah, coming from the Queen herself,” Debbie practically snarls, “Do you want to talk to me about Stan?”

It’s a low blow and Lou knows it, ignores it, because if Debbie had a sane bone in her body right now, she wouldn’t be tossing around the name of the foster father who’d raped Lou when she was fourteen so carelessly. Instead of reacting how Debbie wants her to, Lou simply, sadly, and nostalgically says, “What happened, Deb? I used to be able to-”

“Don’t pull the ‘used to’ bull shit, Lou-nothing between us changed during my time in jail. I still-”

“That’s a lie and you know it. I _used to_ be able to know everything that went on your head, I knew when you were-”

“You didn’t know everything,” she scoffs, tossing the brush onto the sink, the loud clatter of plastic hitting granite countertops making everything seem louder than it is. “You make it seem like we were always perfect and I’m the one who fucked it up but we weren’t-you and I were never some-”

“Would you _listen_ to me, dammit?!” Lou asks, practically yells, as she grabs Debbie’s wrist, turning her roughly so that they’re facing each other, surprise evident on the brunette’s face and she takes advantage of it, knowing she can pull on Debbie’s heartstrings now.

“I love you, you know that, right?” Lou raises her eyebrows dramatically in question, voice considerably softer and more urgent than before, tugging at Debbie’s wrist slightly when she tries to look away, clearly not expecting the rapid topic change in their argument. “You _know_ that, right?” After a beat, Debbie gives her a child-like, tiny nod, the anger on her face having disappeared as something close to embarrassment and hurt takes its place. “Then talk to me-you don’t...baby, you don’t ever _talk_ to me.”

Debbie’s face falls, her shoulders dropping, eyebrows furrowing, chin lowering slightly as she loses her confidence but still manages to look regal enough to rule the world.

“I…” Debbie trails off, anger flashing in her eyes as if she’s going to pick where they left their fight, but Lou know she’s not. When Debbie’s hurt, she’s like a trapped animal; she’ll fight anyone off with an unbelievable amount of aggression until she gets weary and gives in. Danny had told her that-probably the best advice he’d ever given her-soon after Frank Ocean’s death when Debbie was becoming ridiculously, unfairly bitter. He’d explained that, no matter how bad what she says may hurt, she will always give up if you push her hard enough during an argument and she will _always_ apologize afterwards. “Lou, I’m sorry-I don’t…”

Gently, Lou smoothes Debbie’s hair out of her face, keeping her hand resting on the side of soft brunette tresses as she presses a lingering kiss on the Ocean’s forehead. Debbie’s eyelashes flutter against Lou’s chin when she pulls away, her eyes closed and body leaning into where Lou’s touching her.

“Deb-” Lou nudges Debbie’s chin up, practically pleading with her as she meets her brown eyes and says, “ _Talk_ to me.”

Debbie holds her gaze for a long second before she sighs, head tilting downwards slightly in defeat as she quietly says, “Erin’s doing okay, told me she sends her regards-” a humorless laugh leaves Debbie’s lips “-she...I guess she’s gotten involved with some gangster who knows his way around the prison system, got her and five butch women in one night. Guards don’t care what happens, especially if they’re getting paid off, and we had a bloody, fun party in the showers...look.”

Debbie stretches out both of her arms, hands nearly touching Lou, and puts her hands in fists so that Lou can notice-

“They fractured-or broke, I’m still not sure-my right arm and it healed wrong so now it’s about half an inch shorter.” Debbie turns her hands over, palms open towards the ceiling, her barely longer left arm reaching for Lou.

She knows it isn’t anywhere near the whole story, but she already feels guilty enough about arguing with Debbie right after an obviously traumatic nightmare so she lets it go for the moment. She lets Debbie wrap her arms around her waist, nestle her face in the nape of her neck, and press her body against Lou’s because Debbie had always been more of a physical person. She didn’t want someone to tell her they loved her or tell her she’d be okay, she wanted someone to show they loved her and prove to her that she’d be safe-she’d rather be touched than talked to and that made therapy impossible. Most reputable therapists don’t fuck their patients, and that’s how Debbie wanted to deal with her most damaging experiences; have sex whenever a memory made her close in on herself because it was an escape.

Debbie used sex like people use alcohol or cocaine or marijuana or other illegal drugs after traumatic events and, while definitely not healthy for the entire healing after jail process, Lou wasn’t exactly complaining. If they could find some line between fucking after each nightmare and talking about the nightmare, Debbie would probably be able to sleep better, but they still had yet to reach the talking stage of recovery.

“I’m going to kill her,” Lou promises softly into Debbie’s hair after a few moments of silence, squeezing her arms just a little tighter around Debbie’s torso. In the mirror, she can see the long scar on Debbie’s back from a cellmate and an onslaught of tears nearly overtakes her because- _fuck_ -if anyone deserved to be hit around, it sure as hell wasn’t Debbie. She’d spent years of bouncing off angry fists and unforgiving hands and Lou couldn’t ever keep her safe, it seemed.

“She’s a ghost. I tried,” she confesses quietly, lips brushing against Lou’s collarbone as she mumbles the words. “Danny punished her enough, I think.”

 _Nowhere_ near _enough_.

Danny, through his ties to hitmen and his father’s ties to the mafia and Reuben’s ties to various Russian mobsters, had chased Erin halfway across the world for shooting at his baby sister. Erin hadn’t been killed-just severely beat up and tossed around-because Danny wasn’t the kind of person to completely wipe someone out, but the message had been clear; don’t fuck with Oceans. There was a rumor that Danny had purposefully shot at Erin, grazing her hip, just as Erin had with Debbie to scar her and ruin her ability to move from alias to alias. The scar-and tattoo-on Debbie’s hip was what identified her so easily; any law enforcement officer that gave a shit or two about con artists knew that Debbie Ocean, A-List Flight Risk, could be recognized by a long scar over her hip.

“She needs to be punished again,” Lou says firmly, tone not giving Debbie the chance to dispute the statement.

“Tell me how that goes.”

Lou laughs just slightly as Debbie forcefully plops her tired head on her chest, eyelashes soft on her collarbone and forehead warm against her neck. They stand in the bathroom for a few more minutes, a few quiet remarks about sleep and apologies being passed until Lou guides her back to bed, back under the covers, and holds Debbie as she lays next to her, tired as hell but unable to close her eyes.

Lou turns on the TV in their bedroom, flipping through channels aimlessly until she settles on “Casablanca,” because there’s something calming and soothing about the audio quality in black and white films. She firmly stops Debbie’s wandering hands, knowing she needs sleep more than an orgasm, and ignores the downright sinful pout the Ocean gives her as the minutes go by, the movie goes on, and Lou doesn’t budge on her stance towards their sexual activities-or lack thereof-taking place tonight. Finally, with an aggravated sigh, Debbie leans against her and little by little, her eyelids droop as the all-consuming exhaustion she’s been fighting for months overtakes her and soon enough, her eyes are closed and her breathing is even as she sleeps peacefully for a little bit.

Again; Lou’s no miracle worker and ‘talking about it’-especially so briefly-doesn’t ever improve _it,_ so when Debbie wakes up around seven, alert, fully convinced she’s still in prison and ready to fight off the person in bed with her, all Lou can do is give her a sad smile and hold her as she fights off tears, promising herself that even if Debbie won’t ever tell her what her nightmares are about, she’ll always be there through them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! I know it's been ages since I posted and I'm sorry but I'm what I consider a floater because I drift from fandom to fandom and I kind of lost interest in the Ocean's fandom for a bit but I'm back with this. I saw the deleted scene from the movie where Tammy went all Mom on Debbie and paired it with GrilledCheese's suggestion under Chapter 3 to create this chapter. I hope you all enjoy-I'm a bit rusty. Have a fantastical day :)

Tammy closes the door behind her, locking it as she flicks on a light to brighten the living room-if you could call it that-of the warehouse. The place was a mess; most of the planning for the Met heist hadn’t been cleaned up, half of Debbie’s wardrobe was splayed out on the couch, half-read books that would probably never be finished lay on top of every surface, Lou had her bike in the fucking house, and papers littered the floor. Debbie had tacked up a giant world map on the furthermost wall and the information from numerous newspaper articles, police reports, and handwritten documents were written all over it. She hadn’t explicitly said what it was for, but if Tammy had to guess-given that the Ocean now had tons of time and tons of money, but no brother-she was finishing his work of locating their mother, who had mysteriously disappeared over thirty years ago. She knew it was futile to hope to find her alive-her father had undoubtedly killed her-but closure was what Valentina Ocean’s children were looking for.

It’d only been a few months since the heist and everyone had settled into their lives; Amita was in Paris, Constance was a famous Youtuber, Daphne was directing, Rose Weil was now back to being a relevant name in fashion, Nine Ball’s club was doing well in Downtown Brooklyn and Lou had gotten back from California a couple weeks ago. She had traveled cross country on her less-than-ideal bike to buy a brand new one that she had always dreamed of having, or something-in all honesty, Tammy, personally, didn’t care about cars or motorcycles.

She sets her coat down over the red couch, making her way to the kitchen, surprised to find the light on with the one and only Debbie Ocean sitting at the table, looking into her mug with an empty expression on her face.

“What’re you doing here?” She asks, fingers curling around the cup’s handle, but not moving it towards her mouth. “Don’t you have a husband you should be attending to, Mrs. Gordon?”

“What’re you doing up?” Tammy counters, knowing it was nearly four in the morning-even for Debbie, that was an unusual hour to be awake. “Don’t you have a fiancée _you_ should be attending to, Mrs. Future-Miller? Or...” she pauses, not entirely sure how the whole name-change game applied to Lou and Debbie because neither had talked about it, “whatever it is that lesbians do.”

“Funny.” She gives an eyeroll. “Did you abandon your kids?”

“Madison is at a friend’s house for a birthday party sleepover and Nathan is with his Boy Scouts group.”

“And your husband?” Debbie asks, eyebrow quirking. “I haven’t seen the infamous Dr. Gordon recently. How’s he doing?”

“I wouldn’t know, he’s never home.”

“Ah. His plastic surgery office doing well?”

“Something like that,” she offers through a tight smile as she sits down across from Debbie. She’d come here for a peaceful night away from her husband-she didn’t particularly want to talk about a crumbling ten year marriage to a cheating liar with the very woman who had said she didn’t trust Christopher Gordon, no matter how tall or handsome or intelligent he may be, from the moment she met him. It was a bad sign when she first introduced the two and Debbie liked him-she tended to like men who were assholes and that should’ve been the very moment she broke things off.

“How long have you been having problems with Chris?” Debbie asks, and to her credit, she doesn’t sound mocking or proud, but genuinely concerned. “Since the heist?”

“Something like that,” she repeats with a sigh, noticing the bags under Debbie’s eyes. How many nights had she gone without sleeping? Did Lou know? Or did Debbie slip back into bed around six to keep her from worrying? Had-

“You don’t wanna talk about it?” She asks, the tiniest, knowing smirk appearing on her lips as she takes a drink from her mug.

“You wanna talk about why you’re up at four in the morning drinking _tea_?” Debbie never drank tea-it was either water, coffee, or alcohol and, save for the occasional Coke, she never had anything else.

“Getting drunk doesn’t help,” she says, voice sounding raw before she clears her throat, attempting to cover up her mood with more talking, “The coffee machine beeps so loud it’s like that siren from _The Purge_ and Lou’s sleeping right now...and water has no flavor. Lou drinks tea a lot so she’s got plenty. I wanted to try something new.”

“She know you’re up right now?” Tammy asks, meeting Debbie’s eyes, holding her heavy gaze for a minute.

“No…” She gives a long, deep sigh, “She doesn’t. She-Tam, don’t tell her.”

“Well if I wasn’t worried already, I am now,” she says, mind wandering to the thousands of possibilities that could be keeping Debbie up-Danny’s death, Claude’s betrayal, her time in jail, past heists, brushes with death, it could be a lot of things when one considers the nightmare that has been Debbie’s life. It was as if some angel pitched God the idea of a movie with a plot that resembled a mix between the James Bond series, a particularly gruesome episode of “Law and Order: SVU,” and a Tarantino film forty-some years ago and He had really liked it so He cast Debra Ocean as the leading lady.  “Debbie, you know-”

“You can talk to me,” she finishes monotonously, a certain uncharacteristic dejection about the way her shoulders are slumped. “Yeah, I know.”

“Then why don’t you?” She asks, watching the smallest of muscle twitches in Debbie’s face; she was tired, stressed, and the slightest bit scared and Debbie was _never_ scared.

A cynical smile passes over her face as she takes a sip of her tea, saying, “I just don’t.” As at ease as she may be trying to seem, the smile fades and an expression of utmost sadness crosses over her features when she trains her eyes on the wooden kitchen table. It isn’t like Debbie to ever let her emotions show so freely, normally her expressions are planned and not genuine, but whether it be sleep deprivation or the need to vent, her face is giving away every hopeless thought running through her mind.

“Deb-” she taps the table with her pointer finger so Debbie meets her eyes “-what’s going on?”

“It’s...have you seen Lou recently?”

“I saw her…” Tammy trails off, thinking back to the last time she saw Lou. “I saw her last Friday, we went to lunch when you had that meeting with your parole officer. Why?”

Debbie barely hums, eyes focused on the table again before she softly says, “She has a black eye...and a busted lip and a fractured wrist, handprints on her throat.”

“ _What_?” Her voice rises in pitch in volume, causing Debbie to wince, but Tammy doesn’t care; Lou’s a no-nonsense bad ass-she knew fucking Krav Maga for Christ’s sake-there’s no way in _Hell_ she’d ever get attacked and not kick the other guy’s ass. “Why didn’t you call me? When’d this happen? Have you-”

“It happened Friday night,” she says, voice _so_ unbelievably soft. “Tammy-” Their eyes meet, secrecy and regret all over Debbie’s face and Tammy feels like she’s going to have to make a body dump tonight to keep her out of jail. “I...just please don’t hate me-promise me.”

“Deb, I won’t ever hate you,” she responds, thinking _If the body has a single fucking maggot on it, I’m not taking it anywhere._ It’s not Debbie’s style to kill, but she’s different about everything when it comes to Lou.

“I-I don’t sleep well, not since jail, the whole thing just...fucked me up and that damn parole officer keeps trying to find a way to throw me back in and I-” her voice cracks and unshed tears glisten in her eyes “-the nightmares, Tam, they’re so... _real_ and I-Lou _knows_ I have them all the time and I started sleeping in the guest room because I kick or punch or bite or hit whoever tries to wake me up and she _knows_ that, I’ve bruised her enough already but Lou just-she just fucking crawled right in beside me after I’d fallen asleep and I didn’t-I didn’t know it was her-I...I nearly strangled her to _death_ , Tam, I didn’t even realize what I was doing, I was awake but all I could see was the jail cell and she-” her hand clamps over her mouth as suddenly a dam inside her breaks and she can’t finish the story because she’s crying too hard.

“Deb, hey,” Tammy pulls her chair next to Debbie’s as quick as she can, practically dragging her out of her chair to sit across her lap like she’s one of her children. Debbie has her face buried in the crook of her neck before Tammy even has her arms around her in a hug, one hand soothingly running through her long brunette hair.

It takes a lot to get Debbie to cry.

Tammy’d only seen her cry a handful of times; when Danny was sent to jail, when Lou was in the ICU, when Reuben was nearly killed, when they’d been on a heist that had gone wrong four thousand different ways and there was an explosion in the building where Lou was supposed to be and they’d assumed she was dead for nearly twelve hours until the ever-smug Aussie came strolling into their motel room wondering why the hell they were so depressed, and-most recently-about a month ago when Lou was away in California and Debbie, all alone in the warehouse, had come to terms with Danny’s death after two bottles of wine and a family photo album.

“I can’t do this,” Debbie says through tears, clinging to Tammy’s shirt like Madison whenever she falls off her bike. “I can’t-she’s scared of me, Tam, she flinched when I-I can’t-I swore I’d never-”

“Shh, Debs, don’t talk so much.” Her frame shakes with sobs as her head barely nods against Tammy’s neck, redoubling her grasp on her shirt, not realizing that her nails are painfully digging into her flesh. “Lou loves you, she knows you’d never hurt her.”

Tammy’s mind reels at the sudden change in conversation, especially the revelation that Debbie’d been having such intense nightmares.

She wasn’t a fucking idiot-she knew that Debbie hadn’t escaped from jail unscathed, but Debbie always knew how to push her problems away and forget bad experiences and swallow emotions before they consumed her-she very rarely had nightmares. She could always bounce back from anything and it had seemed like she was bouncing back from jail just fine, but...apparently not. Debbie was also never violent-she had no problem putting a gun in someone’s face but she’d never pull the trigger or whack them with it because she simply wasn’t that kind of person.

But nightmares frequent enough that she felt the need to sleep in the guest bedroom to keep herself from hurting Lou?

That’s surreal.

Those two had been the best things in each other’s lives since the very beginning-Tammy had known Debbie since they were in middle school and she was always her best when Lou was around, not even Danny could make her smile quite like Lou. It was indescribable, really, the way those two fueled each other and built each other up, the perfect building blocks of the other’s life. That being said, they were also the ones who could destroy each other-but that was always with harsh words and biting remarks and low blows, not through violence. Neither are physically capable of hurting someone they love and they love each other more than life itself.

“I don’t know what to do,” Debbie says, voice incredibly weak as she pulls away from Tammy’s body, remaining seated on her lap. “I...Tam, I can’t-you should’ve seen her face, she...she was scared, she was _terrified_  ‘cause of me.”

“Deb, anyone in that moment would’ve been scared.” Tammy meets her eyes, the guilt in them overwhelming enough she has to look away. “How’s Lou been? She hasn’t...ignored or-”

“She says she’s fine, but no one means that when they say it, she’s not _fine_. I nearly _killed_ her-she probably hates-”

“Don’t even start with that, Lou loves you more than you’ll ever realize-no, don’t say anything-for once, Debbie, just shut up.” Tammy meets her eyes, taking advantage of the shock in them-she very rarely could shock the Ocean. “You might think you have an idea of how much Lou loves you, but you don’t...you’ll _never_ be able to grasp how utterly, hopelessly in love with you she is. I-she _told_ me how much she loved you, do you have any idea how much that means for someone like Lou? What kind of emotion has to take over a person as psychologically damaged as her to admit that she loves someone? Have _you_ ever talked to anyone about how much you love her?” She pauses, knowing there was a 50/50 chance for a ‘no’ because Debbie had never talked to her about it, so the only other option was Danny, who-by the guilty shake of her head-hadn’t heard it, either. “See? You have nothing to worry about except yourself.”

“But...God, Tammy, her face-her eyes were-I’d never seen anyone so scared, it’s…” She takes a deep, shaky breath. “I won’t _ever_ be able to forget that.”

“How long have you been having nightmares?” She asks, running her hand up and down Debbie’s back soothingly, the mental image of Lou clearly haunting her.

“A while...since the heist ended. I need something to distract me so my mind can’t wander.”

Tammy’s careful not to let the surprise show on her face-Debbie hadn’t had but maybe three nightmares in the near decade they ran cons together, ones so frequent meant some serious shit had happened in jail.

“Have you talked to anyone?”

“No...but Lou knows-obviously…” Debbie meets Tammy’s disapproving expression and she rolls her eyes. “Tam, I don’t-I don’t just talk about stuff.”

“Then what’re you going to do? Sleep in the guest bedroom your whole life? Keep hurting her? Leave her? T-”

“No, no, no-I’m not-I’m just…I don’t _want_ to talk about it.” Her voice is stubborn and adamant; there would be no leaving Lou but there would also be no improving her mental health. Tammy’s not quite sure what she expected, in all honesty. “I’ve gone years without problems and-”

“What’re your nightmares about?” Tammy ventures. The second she asks the question, Debbie’s eyes flit to the floor and remain there, trained intensely on the dark wood. “Heists? Danny? Your father? Jail? A mix?”

“It’s mostly…” Her voice trails off and she licks her lips, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “It’s mostly jail, I guess...Lou knows some of what happened, but...Tammy, you have to understand that I don’t _talk_ about these things.”

“It would help you.”

“I don’t think it would,” she says in that annoying, disbelieving, I-know-more-than-you tone she seems to specifically reserve for Tammy’s bits of wisdom.

“You don’t know until you try.”

“Listen, I know you think in your perfect little world with a white picket fence and two kids that everyone just gathers around the kitchen table and talks about their day and works through their issues like the dinner discussion scene from The Giver but I don’t do that and you can’t expect me to.”

“Then you can’t expect to get better.” Tammy laughs at Debbie’s incredulous expression and continues because Debbie didn’t need to hear a bunch of optimistic, utopian bullshit right now-she needs someone to straighten her out. “You’re never going to be able to sleep peacefully through the night or live without fear of hurting Lou if you don’t fix yourself first.”

“I don’t want to talk to Lou about it, she...she knows enough, if she knew everything, she’d bomb the jail.” Debbie says it like it’s a joke, but it makes Tammy curious; she knows Debbie’d been in a few fights during her jail time, but that hardly seemed enough to make Lou _bomb_ a place. What else had happened? There was some dark secret-or  _secrets_ -Debbie was hiding.

“You need to find someone to talk to. Get a therapist or call me up or-”

“I just…” She bites the inside of her cheek, blinking slowly to stop the onslaught of tears that are threatening to come again. “I want Danny,” she sounds like her kids crying when their beloved dog died last year, voice small, hopeless, and desperate. “He’d know what to do, he always knew what to do.”

“I’m sorry, I know you miss him,” Tammy murmurs, hugging Debbie closer to her, who readily relaxes into her embrace, closing her eyes against her shoulder. “He wouldn’t want you to throw all this away-he’d be losing his mind if he saw you now.” Tammy had known them since they were children and Danny Ocean was easily the best big brother any girl could ever hope for. “Have you considered therapy?”

“Yeah and it sounds like shit. I’m not going to talk to a stranger about-”

“I have a friend from when I went to Columbia-she teaches psychology there now-she’d be more than willing to talk to you.” Tammy pauses. "You've come too far with Lou for this to get ruined, I'm not going to stand by as you two slowly destroy everything you've built. You need help."

“Columbia University is like a hundred blocks from here,” Debbie whines, but the lack of an outright ‘no’ is a positive sign. “I never go towards the Upper West Side.”

“You’ll get some exercise as you go, then...Deb, I’m serious-if you don’t do this for yourself, do it for Lou, hell, do it for _Danny_. What would he think right now? Knowing you’ve been having nightmares and Lou keeps getting hurt?”

“You…” Debbie breathes out, meeting her eyes. “You sure know how to make someone feel guilty, Tam-Tam.”

“You sure know how to make someone lose their mind with worry, Debs, it’s not much better,” she says as Debbie gets off her lap, taking her tea mug from the table and setting it in the kitchen sink.

“When do you think this shrink friend could see me?” Debbie asks conversationally and Tammy’s jaw nearly drops to the floor-that _really_ meant something if Debbie would even consider therapy. Some serious shit had happened on the inside-more than Tammy could’ve ever assumed-if it had messed Debbie Ocean up enough that she admitted she needed help.

“I’ll give you her number.”

“Thanks.” Debbie stands in the kitchen, leaning up against the counter, her face still red from crying her heart out ten minutes prior. “If you want the guest room, go ahead. I’m not going to bed again.”

Tammy wants to object but the idea of the thousand dollar mattress in the guest room makes her stop. Debbie had already tried to sleep, if she didn’t want to face those demons again, she wasn’t going to make her just because she felt like that’s what she needed.

“Alright...I’ll see you later.” Tammy says, lingering in the doorway for a moment, wondering just how safe Debbie is by herself right now. Guilt can make people do crazy things.

“Hey Tam?” Debbie says it as if she’s been debating with herself for a minute whether or not she’s going to say whatever’s coming next.

“Yeah?” She turns around-she’d just been leaving the kitchen-and faces the Ocean from across the room.

“Chris is a fucking idiot-you...you’re too good for him-you’ve always been too good for any of us.”

Tammy smiles at her, the hot feeling of embarrassment spreading throughout her body because she never took compliments well-they’ve always made her flustered, ever since she was little. “Thanks,” she says awkwardly, not sure if she’s supposed to compliment Debbie back or something, opting against it when the Ocean walks past her and towards the map on the wall in the living room.

“I mean it, Tam,” Debbie calls as Tammy’s climbing up the steps to the guest room and it makes her more sad than happy.

If Debbie had suddenly turned to compliments and therapy, jail had damaged-damn near _ruined-_ her more than anyone ever realized.


End file.
